


the weight of family and the pull of gravity

by rumtumtugger



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Someone call Ninja CPS, Team Minato Lives AU, Team Minato-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 09:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16910388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rumtumtugger/pseuds/rumtumtugger
Summary: AU; Obito and Rin survive, and with the Third's abundant wisdom, they're left to their own devices with a newborn orphan the night their Sensei dies.





	the weight of family and the pull of gravity

It’s been just a little over two hours since the last wisp of the Kyuubi’s red fur disappeared from Konoha and only half that time since the Third placed a newborn baby in Rin’s shaking arms.

The scent of smoke hangs heavy in the air. Obito’s been picking at splotches of dried blood on his jacket for ages. And no matter what anyone does, Naruto will absolutely not go to sleep.

It’s something he has in common with the trio of thirteen year olds who have unwittingly found themselves his guardian for the night. Even with the bone deep exhaustion and dread that weigh them down like tombstones tied to their ankles, neither Obito, Rin, or Kakashi could even fathom closing their eyes right now.

Obito and Rin glance at the other every so often like they’re locked in a game of chicken, waiting for the other to give up first as permission to do so themselves. But mostly, they glance at Kakashi as if to just make sure that he’s still there.

He sits on the ground with his back against the end of the bed, his legs crossed underneath him, and his masked face turned towards the door like a stone gargoyle keeping guard. He hasn’t moved since they came inside, and he hasn’t spoken since he had asked the Third about the baby’s name.

(The Third had just sighed as if that question alone had aged him decades beyond his weathered wrinkles, and then he gave them the name that in just one short word summed up all the dashed dreams of the two mutilated corpses being carried away by ANBU behind them.)

(They shouldn’t have, but they looked. How could they not?)

“Sh, sh, sh,” Rin tries to hush the whimpering infant in her arms, bouncing him gently the way she’d seen her mother do with her cousins. Just that little movement is enough to make her shoulders protest.

It’s possible but not pressing just yet that she might’ve pulled something earlier at the hospital during the first few minutes of the devastation, when the ceiling had begun to crumble. She’d used nothing but her bare hands and a surge of desperate adrenaline to hold up debris that might’ve crushed an six year old getting his shots for the Academy.

The ache makes Rin want to hand Naruto to Obito, but every time the thought so much as crosses her mind while she looks at him, he gets the same panicked grimace on his face like she’s going to spit fire into his eyes. She tries not to feel resentful about it, but she can’t help the little bit that seeps through.

Obito, thankfully, has at least been making up for his ineptitude in infant care with thoughtfulness. One of Kushina’s blankets is draped around her shoulders and there’s a chilled mug of tea beside the armchair she’s sitting in. It’s yellow tea -- imported from outside the Land of Fire, and she’s never seen Minato drink any other kind.

One sip was all she could handle. It was watery and too sweet, but mostly, it was just because the thought crossed her mind as she readjusted Naruto to hold the mug that he would never even know the way his father made it. Maybe he wouldn’t even like tea. Maybe nothing about Sensei would live on in him.

They’re absolutely absurd, spiraling thoughts to have about a beverage and an infant who hasn’t even comprehended the existence of his own toes, and she breaks herself away from those thoughts by focusing on the pressing needs of now.

Food. Shelter. Rest.

If Obito wants to keep his distance from Naruto, then he can keep making himself useful in other ways.

She asks him for a diaper, and he braves Minato-sensei’s closet and all the baby supplies and boxes and memories inside to clothe Naruto. She asks him for baby formula, and he grabs his ripped jacket and braves the destruction outside to feed Naruto.

She’s still not sure what else he braved out there. He comes back much later quiet and withdrawn, even moreso than he’d been when he’d left.

“Hey,” he says suddenly once during the first few hours.

His tone is hollow and unsure, and the space after his hanging statement is filled with the distant sound of shouting shinobi. Their footsteps thunder on the cracked pavement outside of Minato and Kushina’s little house, and almost instinctively, Rin pulls Naruto a little closer to her chest.

“You think...he knows?”

“Knows what?” she murmurs apprehensively in return. It’d be easy to say Naruto doesn’t know anything -- after all, he hasn’t even seen his first sunrise, but Obito looks serious. More serious than she’d ever seen him before tonight.

She wants to listen to him, to be there for him, but it doesn’t take a genius like Kakashi to know he’s swirling with dark and somber thoughts that’s about to be added to her own burden. Her eyes are burning from the smoke and exhaustion, and her thoughts are sluggish, and she thinks she might be the first one out of all of them to drop.

Same old Rin. Can’t keep up.

Obito’s quiet for a few moments longer, seemingly ruminating over what he wants to say before he finds the words, and Rin then wishes he hadn’t.

“You think he knows that Minato-sensei is gone?”

Whatever comfort they’d found in the little guest bedroom that used to host their sleepovers gets sucked right out by the elephant sitting in the corner.

Rin hesitates and bites her lips, but her focus isn’t even on Obito’s deathly serious and earnest eyes. She’s staring at Kakashi’s back as he goes even more still than before. He’s been statue-like with numbness for hours, but she suspects he’s even holding his breath now.

Then, she lowers her gaze to Naruto with his scrunched up face and tiny fingers curled into fists. She tries to wonder if somewhere in his small, undeveloped consciousness, he’s understood innately that his mother and father are gone. And then she just wonders if that would mean loneliness would be the first thing he’d ever feel.

“I don’t know,” she admits. Her voice is small and defeated, and as if sensing that, Naruto begins to whimper harder as she strokes his hair.

Please stop talking, she begs Obito both inside her head and with her dismayed, anxious frown, but he doesn’t hear.

“What do you think they’re going to do with him?” Obito asks instead. He’s sitting on the bed across from her with his head bowed and his fingers fiddling with the cracks on his goggles, and Rin just sighs.

They’re barely adults in their own right, ninja rank or not. They can kill and maim and fight, but they don’t have what it takes to care for a baby. Not even Sensei’s baby. If Rin had to guess -- which she doesn’t want to just yet -- Naruto will probably be taken to an orphanage, or maybe given to one of the other jounin like Shikaku to raise.

She tries to imagine his spiky blond hair in a high ponytail like a Nara, but even that image is more miserable in this moment than it is funny.

“I heard the clans are arguing about it,” Obito continues, crossing his arms and tapping his fingers against them as if he just can’t quite sit still. “They’re talking about him like he’s a _weapon_. I heard them when I snuck into the tower.”

“You snuck into the tower?” Rin’s tone is sharp and bewildered as she looks at him while trying to understand, but Obito just shrugs without concern.

“I had to ask the old man for baby formula.”

By ‘old man,’ Rin just knows he means the Third Hokage. If she wasn’t so tired, she’d reprimand him, but...he did get what he needed, eavesdropping and all.

Obito looks back at her evenly.

“Some of the old geezers… I think they want to kill him.”

A lump grows in her throat, but Rin can’t even act surprised. It’s exactly what she’d been afraid of ever since the Third had mumbled the word ‘Kyuubi’ while handing him over.

“They can’t kill a baby,” Rin argues, but even she knows it’s a weak excuse. Her tone wavers like she doesn’t quite believe her own words. After all, it’s hard to stay ignorant of the things the Leaf has been willing to do while in wartime. Not when training under the village hero meant she’s been front-row to part of it. “The Third won’t allow it. He’s not even a day old. He can’t hurt anyone.”

“But he can, one day,” Obito says. He’s staring at her with serious eyes, and Rin doesn’t like that look on her goofy best friend one single bit. “You’ve heard the stories about jinchuuriki. He can grow up and turn into a monster.”

“Kushina wasn’t a monster,” Rin spits, and just the implication that he’s making when Kushina’s not even here to smack Obito over the head is enough to spark a pit of anger next to the pit of dread in her gut.

“Kushina had Minato-sensei. He has no one.”

An answer as to why Obito’s suddenly saying these things doesn’t occur to her as she grits her teeth and glares at him, but before she can summon up any hurtful words she’ll regret instantly, Kakashi speaks up for the first time in hours.

“He has us.”

Those simples words are enough to stop them in their tracks, and both Obito and Rin look at him with varying shades of apprehension and hope.

“He has us,” Kakashi repeats without turning around, even though his voice is rough with disuse and something else. “He...has us. If they try to kill him, we’ll run. We’ll head to a smaller village far away from the Land of Fire where no one will know us, and he’ll be safe.”

It sounds like a pipe dream at best, and definitely not something that a shinobi like Kakashi would ever have faith in. If they took off with the village jinchuuriki and son of the Fourth Hokage, there’d never be anywhere that they’d be safe.

But...it was a little nice to fantasize that they’d at least still be together.

“Yeah,” Obito says with a swallow and a grin that seems like it’s hurting him, but at least he’s no longer putting the image of three matching family coffins in her head. “Heh, I could use a vacation right now anyways.”

A vacation. She bows her head and cradles Naruto close to her. She’d settle for just having this all be a nightmare.

They quiet down after that, each lost in their own thoughts. And later, it’s without words that they decide like a trio of telepathic zombies to find Naruto’s bassinet to lay him down in.

Rin remembers it being in the living room, surrounded by screwdrivers and empty cardboard boxes while Kushina painstakingly assembled it. Minato had served them all tea -- yellow tea -- and Kakashi and Obito had bickered over where each part went until they’d been banished to the couch to grumble and fume.

Now, it’s behind the closed door of Minato and Kushina’s bedroom. None of them -- not even Kakashi, who trails behind the two like an automaton -- think to linger and stare and conflict themselves over opening the door. Obito just pushes it open without thinking, and there’s that.

It’s exactly as if they had only planned to be gone for a few days. Their covers are ruffled and Kushina’s favorite hair tie is laying on the bed stand, but almost disappointingly, it just feels like _stuff_.

They feel like they’re intruding, but not any more so than any other time they’d poked their heads inside here. There’s no presence here left to intrude on. No ghosts. Wherever Minato and Kushina are now, they’re far beyond their reach.

Kakashi sits down on the bed and bows his head as Rin lingers uncomfortably by the door, adjusting Naruto every few seconds to try and get some relief for the ache in her arms. Obito just busies himself with pushing the bassinet out from the corner to right beside the bed without being asked.

“Here, give him to me,” Kakashi speaks hollowly and he holds his arms out without looking.

It feels like a bad idea -- after all, they’re all so exhausted and Kakashi was closer to the two than Rin knows she even comprehends -- but the thought of being able to relax for even a few moments nearly makes her cry, and so she hands Naruto over.

Before, he’s begun to cry the moment she’s even thought about it, but this time Naruto just gurgles deep in his throat as he passes from Rin to Kakashi. His blue eyes blink up innocently, and it’s almost like he wakes Kakashi from his own sleep.

“Hey,” he mumbles quietly to the baby, adjusting his grip awkwardly to hold him the way Rin had tried teaching them both hours ago. He’d been so still that she hadn’t even been aware he’d been listening. “Hey, Naruto. I’m...Kakashi.”

“This is your Uncle,” Rin adds quietly as she joins him on the bed, arms finally slack by her sides and all the better for it. She doesn’t even really notice as she sniffs a bit. She’s just so, so tired. “And over there is your Uncle Obito.”

Obito, who had finished dragging the bassinet closer and was just leaning against it with his arms crossed, startles and looks up. But there’s a pleased flush to his ashy cheeks, and he grins and nods at that.

It’s hard to remember that just hours ago -- or maybe minutes -- he’d been talking about the little boy growing up to be a monster.

“And I’m your Aunt Rin.” She licks her dry lips, and even though her arms hurt, she reaches forward and touches his face ever so gently, admiring the wispy blond hair that so achingly reminds her of Minato-sensei.

He’s scrunched up and looks more like an alien than a shinobi, but he’s beautiful to Rin, and she thinks she catches a glimpse of how beautiful he must have looked to Kushina too.  

“We’re going to take care of you from now on. Maybe not...Maybe not like your mom and dad would’ve, but no matter where they put you, we’re always be here for you.”

It’s an enormous promise, and one they all know that they more than likely will never be able to fulfill.

They’re kids, and it wasn’t as if Minato had thought to include them as Naruto’s legal guardians in his will because it wasn’t as if Minato had thought tonight would come to this.

But they keep quiet about their doubts, if only for Naruto’s sake and for each other’s.

Kakashi quietly gets up from the bed and lays Naruto down in the plain white bassinet. It’s bare inside, and Obito murmurs behind him as he peers over the edge about getting Naruto a blanket, but nobody makes any move to do so. Before long, Obito’s shed his own dusty jacket and carefully put it over Naruto’s legs, moving with a grimace as if the daintiest touch will set him off like a bomb.

It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

The crib is painted with the Uzumaki whirlpools along the legs, and little bowls of ramen, and a picture of Kakashi’s cartoon face with X’s for eyes. None of it matches, and only some of it has any sort of artistic creativity whatsoever, but last week with his hair pulled back and a wide smile on his face, Minato had handed each of his students little paintbrushes and asked them to draw.

Now, Rin almost wishes she had insisted Minato and Kushina do it themselves. It would’ve meant more that way, maybe.

After Naruto’s settled with a sleepy smack of his lips that makes the three of them look up immediately as if already attuned to his every noise, they climb tiredly into the large bed with all of their gear still on.

In the morning, they’ll regret it. They’ll have chased away the last of Minato and Kushina’s scents in their own bedsheets with their sweat and dirt, but for now, they’re just so tired.

“He needs to eat every two hours,” Rin reminds them with a detached, anxious tone even as they get underneath the covers. She’s on the side closest to the bassinet with Kakashi beside her and Obito on the other end, the way they always do. “And the protections the Third placed on the house should hold, but…”

“I’ll keep watch,” Kakashi assures her quietly, and he sits against the headboard in between them instead of laying down. Rin just turns and presses her forehead to his knee, and when she breathes out, he can feel it.

“Wake me in an hour and we’ll trade,” Obito mumbles, seemingly already half-asleep as he splays out over his side and nearly takes up half the bed. His leg is in front of Kakashi in the space where he would be lying if he could only assure himself there’d be no replays of everything he’d seen, and for a second, his dark eyes watch Obito carefully.

Obito had seen half the night -- half the destruction -- with his own Sharingan. Talk about replays.

“Whatever,” Kakashi just says in return, watching the little bits of early morning sunshine creep its way through the window blinds. They’d survived the night. But not really much more than that.

They’re all quiet for a long while after that.

Kakashi stays vigilant over his two teammates, still as a statue. Rin tries to sleep, and though her body desperately craves it, she hovers in a restful in-between of consciousness and dreams, aware of the room around her and the overfull bed and every single one of Naruto’s snuffles.

They’d both thought Obito had passed out ages ago until he speaks again.

“I hate this world.”

Rin opens her eyes and sluggishly peers over Kakashi’s lap to where Obito’s staring at the ceiling with an expression she’s only ever seen on older jounin. He doesn’t sound petulant when he says that. He sounds dark and angry and determined, though determined to do what, Rin doesn’t know. It’s absolutely chilling to see him like this and she just swallows, unsure of how to respond.

“I hate this world,” he repeats. And for a long moment, the three of them sit in a heavy silence. No comfort comes, and Obito continues. “I’m going to change it.”

“Yeah,” is all she knows to say, because there’s not really anything else. It’s not a lie or a truth -- just an acknowledgement. On any other day than today, she’d grin softly back at him with all the hope in the world, just barely able to catch a glimpse of his vision of his own face staring serenely back from the Hokage Monument.

But it’s not any other day. It’s today. And she just says, “Yeah.”

It’s quiet again for a moment after that, but they both can feel that Obito’s not done yet.

“I miss Sensei,” he admits like it’s a grand confession and not something he had sobbed and whimpered over already, claiming that dust from the battlefield they’d arrived at too late had gotten behind his goggles as they both pretended not to look.

“Yeah,” Rin repeats quietly. This one’s closer to letting out a truth. She misses him too, so much already that her chest burns.

She turns her head to the other side away from Kakashi’s knee where she sees their team photo framed on the bed stand. It’s naturally on Minato-sensei’s side, right next to an old mug he must’ve left there thinking he’d clean it later. It probably had yellow tea in it.

Her throat closes as she stares at it.

She’s been a shinobi long enough to know death and loss, but just like a little girl, she still finds herself wanting him to step into the room and scold them all without meaning it for climbing into his bed without washing. She wants him to field their bombardment of enthusiastic questions about the battle gracefully, and tell them under the guise of sharing strategy how he had heroically defended the village just like he had ended the war that had defined them.

More than anything, however, she wants him to pick up that innocent baby in the bassinet and tell him everything only his father can.

“You think we’ll be okay?”

Rin is quiet for a long time. And then finally, with her back to her two boys, she reaches over to the edge of the bassinet and just touches it.

“...Yeah.”

That one is the lie.


End file.
